No, not the now-discredited, U.S.-military-flushed-the-Koran-down-the-toilet story. For its Feb. 2, 2005, issue, Newsweek's Asian international edition ran a cover showing a garbage pail with a large American flag inside. The caption read, "The Day America Died." Inside, an article that severely criticizes America, by Princeton Professor Andrew Moravcsik, who, among other things, serves as nonresident senior fellow with the liberal Brookings Institution (a relationship not disclosed).

That week's Newsweek European international edition ran a cover of President George W. Bush at the presidential podium. The caption read, "America Leads . . . But Is Anyone Following?" Again, Professor Moravcsik's article ran inside.

What about that week's American edition? No cover showing Bush at the podium or an American flag in a garbage pail. No Professor Moravcsik article. Instead, the American edition ran a cover with Jamie Foxx, Hilary Swank and Leonardo DiCaprio, under the caption, "Oscar Confidential: Hollywood's Hottest Stars Together -- A Candid Talk About Acting, Fear, and Fame." That's right, American readers saw an entirely different cover, with Moravcsik's article AWOL.

According to Investor's Business Daily, an editor's note accompanied the Asian and European international editions. It read: "Verified facts, not opinions from any viewpoint, are laid out in this issue."

Moravcsik writes that, contrary to what Americans think, the American Dream no longer exists: "But the greater danger may be a delusional America, one that believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the American Dream lives on, that America remains a model for the world... "

America's 2004 unemployment rate was 5.5 percent, lower than Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the combined European Union. American GDP grew at 4.4 percent in 2004, versus United Kingdom's 3.2 percent, Japan's 2.9 percent, Spain's 2.6 percent, France's 2.1 percent, Germany's 1.7 percent, Italy's 1.3 percent and the European Union's 2.4 percent. America has the second highest GDP per capita in the world (Luxembourg is first), more than 30 percent higher than both Japan and the United Kingdom.

Professor Moravcsik doesn't much care for the Bush administration's foreign policy: "The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not only do others not share America's self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country's social and economic achievements. The loss of faith in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq."

Swaggering administration? Please note that the president got a U.N. resolution telling Saddam Hussein to disarm or else. Congress passed a resolution supporting the war. The majority of Americans supported the war effort, re-electing George W. Bush. Even now, with the persistence of the so-called "insurgency," the majority of Americans want us to stay the course. Does that make most Americans "swaggerers"?

Moravcsik condemns America for not expanding its welfare state: "Once most foreign systems reach a reasonable level of affluence, they follow the Europeans in treating the provision of adequate social welfare is [sic] a basic right." A reasonable level of affluence?' What is reasonable? Defined by whom? Apparently Professor Moravcsik prefers a command-and-control economy -- maybe the appointment of a wage or benefits czar -- to determine the deserving and the undeserving.

Moravcsik berates American health care: "'Americans have the best medical care in the world,' Bush declared in his Inaugural Address. Yet, the United States is the only developed democracy without a universal guarantee of health care, leaving about 45 million Americans uninsured." But British media consider their country's state-run health care system in "crisis." Their National Health Service (NHS) is heavily in debt, despite huge taxes and a doubling in spending over the last seven years. The U.K.'s press reports that twice as many bureaucrats now join NHS than doctors and nurses, and that 858,000 people were on a waiting list for an operation at the end of 2004, some of them waiting over a year!

For those still in denial about leftist bias in mainstream news, these must be tough times.

Consider the Associated Press story on Janice Rogers Brown, the black conservative California Supreme Court jurist nominated by President Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The AP wire story began: "Blacks decried Janice Rogers Brown's nomination to a federal appeals court . . . " Blacks? All blacks? Nobody dissented? All 30-plus million blacks held a straw vote, with Brown getting zero votes? About an hour-and-a-half later, a "recast" AP story came over the wire. Same article, only this time the first line read, "Civil rights lawyers here decried Janice Rogers Brown's nomination . . . " Maybe somebody felt guilty.

The Newsweek affair and the AP story serve as a window into how many in mainstream media view our country. They celebrate the welfare state, consider health care a right, while downplaying the worldwide threat posed by extremist Islam. If, as Newsweek's editor note claims, Professor Moravcsik's article simply advances the truth, why not let Americans, the people who stand to benefit the most, read it? After all, it is we Americans who "are living in a dream world." Please, wake us up.